Playing For Keeps (The Alpha Brotherhood #3)(5)
Author: Catherine Mann

She needed to get out of there before she lost it altogether and succumbed to the temptation to throw herself into the comfort of his arms, to bury her face in his shirt.

To inhale the scent of him until it filled her senses.

“Things would have turned out better for you with more financial options,” Celia said, reminded of how he’d lost out on the promise of a scholarship to Juilliard. “But no amount of money would have changed the choices I made. What we shared is in the past.” Securing her computer tote bag on her shoulder, she pushed past him. “Thank you for worrying about me, but we’re done here. Goodbye, Malcolm.”

She rushed by, her foot knocking and jangling a box of tambourines on her way out into the gymnasium. Malcolm could stay or go, but he wasn’t her concern anymore. The custodian would lock her office after he swept up. She had to get away from Malcolm before she made a fool of herself over him.

Again.

Her sandals slapped an even but fast pace through the exit and directly into the teachers’ parking lot. Thank heavens she didn’t have to march through the halls with the whole school watching and whispering. Tears burning her eyes, she registered the sound of his footsteps behind her, but she kept moving out into the muggy afternoon.

The parking lot was all but empty, another hour still left in the school day. In the distance, the playground hummed with the cheers of happy children. What a double-edged sword it was working here, a job she loved but with constant reminders of what she’d given up.

Her head fell back, and she blinked hard. The sunshine blinded her, making her eyes water all the more. Damn Malcolm Douglas for coming into her life again and damn her own foolish attraction to him that hadn’t dimmed one bit. She swiped away the tears and charged ahead to her little green sedan. Heat steamed up from the asphalt. Magnolia-scented wind rustled the trees and rolled across the parking lot. A flyer flapped under the windshield wiper.

She stopped in her tracks, her hand flying to her throat. Was that another veiled warning from her father’s latest enemy?

Every day for a week, she’d found a flyer under her wiper, all relating to death. A funeral parlor. Cemetery plots. Life insurance. The police had called it a coincidence.

She pinched the paper out from under the blade, shuffling her computer bag higher up onto her shoulder. The flyer advertised…

A coupon for flowers? A sigh of relief shuddered through her.

An absolutely benign piece of paper. She laughed, crumpling the ad in her hand. She was actually getting paranoid, which meant whoever was trying to scare her had won. She fished out her keys and thumbed the unlock button on the key fob. Then she reached to slide her computer bag onto the passenger seat…

And stopped short.

A black rose rested precisely in the cup holder. There was no mistaking the ominous message. Somehow that macabre rosebud had gotten into her car. Someone had been in her locked vehicle.

Bile rose in her throat. Her mind raced back to the florist ad under her windshield wiper. She pulled the paper out of her computer bag and flattened the coupon on the seat.

Panic snapped through her veins, her emotions already on edge from the unexpected encounter with Malcolm. She bolted out of her sedan, stumbling as she backed away. Her body slammed into someone. A hard male chest. She stifled a scream and spun fast to find Malcolm standing behind her.

He cupped the back of her head. “What’s wrong?”

With his fingers in her hair and her nerves in shambles, she couldn’t even pretend to be composed. “There’s a black rose in my car—completely creepy. I don’t know how it got there since I locked up this morning. I know I did, because I had to use my key fob to get in.”

“We call the cops, now.”

She shook her head, nudging his hand aside. “The police chief will write it up and say I’m paranoid about some disgruntled students.”

The old chief would make veiled references to mental instability in her past, something her father had tried to keep under wraps. Few knew. Still, for them, a stigma lingered. Unfair—not to mention dangerous since she wasn’t being taken seriously.

From the thunderclouds gathering in Malcolm’s eyes, he was definitely taking her seriously. He clasped her shoulders in broad, warm hands, gently urging her to the side and into the long shadows of his bodyguards. Malcolm strode past her to the sedan, looking first at the rose, then kneeling to peer under the car.

For a bomb or something?

She swallowed hard, stepping back. “Malcolm, let’s just call the police after all. Please, get away from my car.”

Standing, he faced her again, casting a tall and broad-shouldered shadow over her in a phantom caress. “We’re in agreement on that.” He charged forward and clasped her arm, the calluses on his fingers rasping against her skin. “Let’s go.”

“Did you see something under there?”

“No, but I haven’t looked under the hood. I’m getting you out of here while my men make sure it’s safe before the rest of the school comes pouring out.”

The rest of the school? The sound of the children playing ball in the distance struck fear in her gut. The faces of her teacher friends and students scrolled through her head. To put an entire school in harm’s way? She couldn’t fathom whoever was threatening her would risk drawing this much attention—would risk this many lives. But there was definitely something more sinister about this latest threat, and that rattled her.

Malcolm tugged her farther from the vehicle.

“Where are we going?” She looked back over her shoulder at the redbrick building with the flags flapping in the wind. “I need to warn everyone.”

“My bodyguards are already taking care of that,” he reassured her. “We’re going to my limo. It has reinforced windows and an armor-plated body. We can talk there and figure out your next move.”

Reinforced windows? Armor plating? Security in front and behind? He truly did have all the money he’d once dreamed of, access to resources beyond her own local law enforcement. Enough resources to protect her from all threats, real or imagined.

She shivered in apprehension and didn’t bother denying herself the comforting protection of Malcolm’s presence all the way to his stretch Cadillac.

* * *

Malcolm stopped seeing red once he had Celia tucked into the safety of his armored limousine and the chauffer was headed for her home.

Two of his bodyguards had stayed with her vehicle to wait for the police—and report the details back to him without the filter of local authorities. He didn’t think there was anything else wrong with her vehicle, but better to be certain and put all of his financial resources to work. He’d done all he could for now to make sure Celia and the school weren’t in danger.